Veteran Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Masood has vowed to drive the Taliban religious militia out of his former northeastern stronghold of Taloqan and hinted at a new alliance with his old ally, Abdul Rashid Dostam.
In an exclusive interview with AFP at his ready-made operations centre at Ai Khanoum, northwest of Taloqan, Masood said he had recently met Dostam, one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, and discussed opening a new western front in the war-torn country.
"My first objective is Taloqan," the 47-year-old Tajik said from his base near Khwadjaghar, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of Taloqan, the Takhar provincial capital and his main northern base until Taliban forces captured the city early last month.
"I will take the city before winter. We are a dozen kilometers to the northeast, the east and the south."
He said he intended to encircle the city -- which has changed hands between Masood and the Taliban several times in the past -- and force the religious militia to retreat ahead of the onset of winter.
The militia of "religious students" captured Taloqan after fierce fighting throughout Takhar province and the east of neighbouring Kunduz province.
Its loss represented a serious blow to Masood -- the Taliban's last obstacle to full control of the country -- and severely disrupted his supply lines to Tajikistan in the north.
He said the city had to be abandoned due to logistical difficulties and because the Taliban "were not alone."
"They had some 500 fighters loyal to (alleged Saudi terrorist) Osama bin Laden, 800 students of Pakistani religious schools and 1,800 Pakistani soldiers," Masood said.
He said the Taliban lost about 2,000 soldiers in their northeasten offensive, while some 345 opposition troops were killed and another 500 wounded.
The meeting between Masood and Dostam, an ethnic Uzbek, took place in the first week of October, he said.
Dostam was one of the most feared opponents of the Taliban as the militia drove into the north after they seized the capital, Kabul, in 1996.
But he was eventually driven from his northwestern bastion in 1998 and has since spent most of his time in exile.
Masood said Dostam was "close to renewing the fight" and noted that Ismail Khan, the former anti-Taliban governor of western Herat province, who escaped from a militia jail in March, had hidden a number of troops in neighbouring Iran.
He said part of the solution to ending Afghanistan's internecine strife was greater international pressure on Pakistan to stop interfering in the affairs of its western neighbor.
Islamabad routinely denies providing any military support to the Taliban, which shares ethnic sympathies with the large Pashtun minority in Pakistan, but admits that "individuals" cannot be stopped crossing the border to join the ultra-orthodox Islamic militia.
Masood reiterated his willingness to participate in a coalition government with the Taliban, but only for "six months or a year."
Then general elections would have to be held under the supervision of the United Nations, he said.
Known during the guerrilla war against the 1979-1980 Soviet occupation as the "Lion of the Panjshir," Masood reserved some of his fiercest rhetoric for Taliban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar, who he described as "the Pakistanis' man."
"A lot of chiefs in the Taliban who do not accept the Pakistanis have contacts with me," he said, without giving their names -- AI KHANOUM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
